Photo by fromcaliw/love.Our city is getting invaded — and it is going to be a welcome occupation of our pint glasses and beer coasters. 2011 is the year of Washington D.C. beer.
Not since the ’50s has the District had a beer it could truly call its own. The Olde Heurich Brewing Company closed in 1956 and would be razed to make room for the Kennedy Center. While we do have quality brews being made around the area at places like Mad Fox, Capital City Brewery, and District Chophouse, we’ve had no beer that we can commercially buy to call our own. But times are changing, and in the coming months our bars and shelves will be graced with beer made by locals, for locals.
DC Brau’s Brandon Skall and Jeff Hancock are D.C. natives who finally set up a commercial brewery in District limits. Skall was a wine distributor in Northern Virginia who had aspirations of opening up his own brewery. Calling on Hancock, an old friend who had experience brewing at Grizzly Peak in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Flying Dog in Frederick, Maryland, the two set plans in motion and got their Certificate of Occupancy on St. Patrick’s Day — signifying the first D.C. brewery to be able to brew legally in over 50 years.
DC Brau intends to release a pale ale (The Public), Belgian pale (The Citizen) and a hop-laden IPA (The Corruption). They’ve also decided to go with a canning system as opposed to traditional bottles. While the aluminum can is not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as a bottle, the benefits of cans — increased freshness, less oxidation, and “green” aspects — make it used by other popular brewers such as 21st Amendment, Oskar Blues and Surly. Skall and Hancock hope to provide the city with quality ales that not only show their love of craft beer, but love of their city, one beer at a time. They are currently scaling their recipes to their new equipment and hope to have their beers on the streets of D.C. within a month.
Chocolate City Beer is the brainchild of Ben Matz and Jay Irizarry. Their nanobrewery location in Brookland will be churning out kegs of their Big Chair IPA to area watering holes some time in May. The company is currently gathering equipment from various manufacturers around the world and working through the legal issues surrounding brewing. Once that is complete, it won’t be long before you see this IPA around town at places like Wonderland Ballroom and its sister bar Looking Glass Lounge. While they may be working on a smaller 3.5 BBL system (about 7 kegs per batch), their focus is to concentrate on small batches that will stay in D.C., for D.C.
3 Stars Brewing may not be leading the charge into D.C., but they are certainly going to assault your palate with awesomeness as soon as they can with their take-no-prisoners style. Dave Coleman (who is the beer director at The Big Hunt) and Mike McGarvey are bringing out all out the big guns in the form of big beer. The majority of their line-up will be high-flavor, high-alcohol beers that have become a staple of the new American craft movement. Beers that clock in between 8-10 percent ABV will be the norm.
However, this is not a gimmick. These beers are meant to be big with bold, complex flavors. IPA, Rye IPA, Porter and a Winter Warmer are just some of the beers that 3 Stars will offer, and they intend to have different versions of many of them in order to create a well-rounded portfolio. 3 Stars is currently fine-tuning their recipes and hopes to begin the attack this fall.
Finally, one of the best-known beer bars in the city, The Black Squirrel. is planning on getting into the mix with their own beers. Bar manager Hollie Stephenson spent time last fall at the esteemed Brewlab school in England learning commercial brewing techniques and methodologies. While she plans to be running test batches for some time to get things just right, Black Squirrel, with its newly expanded basement bar, will be a great asset to the beer community once brewing gets under way.
And in case you thought you could escape the onslaught of new brews by going to Maryland or Virginia, well, you would be mistaken. Port City, based in Alexandria, has begun to infiltrate bars and stores all over the city. Their Optimal Wit is a fantastic interpretation of a Belgian wit that is heavy handed with exotic citrus and coriander. The Porter Pale Ale, and IPA will be available around town, and you can also get growlers filled at the brewery.
And from our friends to the north, a nanobrewery in Rockville called Baying Hound Aleworks offers its Lord Wimsey’s Mild Pale Ale in the D.C. market to those who are looking for something a bit easygoing.
So what does this mean for us? It means fresh and local beer, made by those who have a passion for it. All of the people involved in these projects have been vocal members of the craft scene for years. Many of them have known each other for a long time. There have been a number of writers who have described this oncoming storm as a race, but I’ve never seen it that way. I see it as a scene, a family of people who are doing what they love at the same time. The music scene isn’t a race to see who puts out a record or gets signed to a label first. It’s a collective that knows they all bring different visions to the table, and this diversity is what will make the scene vibrant. When I mentioned how many people viewed it as a race and I disagreed, Dave Coleman of 3 Stars chuckled and said, “Race? These are products of our love and the market is so wide open. There is room for all of us doing our own thing. So why wouldn’t we help each other out instead of racing to the top?”
I agree. Let the invasion begin.
